Abstract
Introduction: Memory alterations are common in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients but the mechanisms involved in these deficits remain poorly understood. The study aims to explore the profile of episodic memory deficits in non-demented early PD patients.Methods: We obtained neurological, cognitive and behavioral data from 114 PD patients and 41 healthy controls (HC). PD participants were grouped as normal cognition (PD-NC) and mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) according to the Level II criteria of the Movement Disorders Society Task Force (MDS-TF). We evaluate the performance amongst groups on an episodic memory task using the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT). Additionally, gray matter volume (GMV) voxel based morphometry, and mean diffusivity (MD) analyses were conducted in a subset of patients to explore the structural brain correlates of FCSRT performance.Results: Performance on all subscores of the FCSRT was significantly worse in PD-MCI than in PD-NC and HC. Delayed total recall (DTR) subscore was the best at differentiating PD-NC from PD-MCI. Using crosstabulation, DTR allowed identification of PD-MCI patients with an accuracy of 80%. Delayed free and cued recall was associated with decreased GMV and increased MD in multiple fronto-temporal and parietal areas.Conclusion: Encoding and retrieval deficits are a main characteristic of PD-MCI and are associated with structural damage in temporal, parietal and prefrontal areas.
Highlights
Memory alterations are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients but the mechanisms involved in these deficits remain poorly understood
Performance on all subscores of the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT) was significantly worse in PD-MCI than in participants were grouped as normal cognition (PD-NC) and healthy controls (HC)
Encoding and retrieval deficits are a main characteristic of PD-MCI and are associated with structural damage in temporal, parietal and prefrontal areas
Summary
Memory alterations are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients but the mechanisms involved in these deficits remain poorly understood. At the time Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis, up to 30% of patients meet diagnostic criteria for mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) [1,2,3]. Identifying early cognitive indicators suggestive of progression to dementia is a major need to stratify patients in different groups of risk and to design interventions before PDD onset. In this sense, the addition of posteriorcortical type deficits -to the prototypical frontal-executive alterations seen in most PD patients- seem to characterize the transition from PD-MCI to PDD in this population. The development of language, memory and visuospatial/visuoperceptive alterations are indicative of a more aggressive progression of cognitive deterioration in PD [7, 8]
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